Mending
by staceycj
Summary: Dean recues Sam from a crazy hunter hell bent on killing Sam and this is how the two mend physically and emotionally.  Post 6X22 No Wincest!
1. Chapter 1

AN: Thanks to clair beaubien for giving me a plot idea to run with!

* * *

><p>"P..P…Please let me go." Sam begged licking his dry lips. His eyes rolled towards the man who had kidnapped him days ago. "I'm not a threat to you." He whispered hoarsely.<p>

"That's what I've been told for years. 'Them Winchester boys ain't no threat to nobody….they're just fighting the good fight right alongside of us.' And I believed the talk. Always saw what you boys did, saw how many people you saved. Then you came after my family."

"What?" Sam asked, tongue thick and heavy in his mouth. "Me and my brother don't hurt innocent people."

"Oh, I ain't talking about your brother boy. I'm talking about you." The angry hunter leaned so far into Sam's face that they were almost touching noses. His breath was foul and his eyes were glittering with anger, and Sam knew now why no one messed with Eugene Higgins, even Bobby knew enough to steer clear of the man. He was a fantastic hunter, but he was dangerous, unstable, no one in the hunting community knew exactly why he was this way, and no one had ever been brave enough to ask. "You killed my daughter. Don't you remember?" He grabbed Sam by the shoulders and shook him hard. "Don't' you?" Sam looked up into Eugene's eyes and the memory of his time while soulless came back and he saw the girl, the girl with the pretty hair and hopeful eyes, and he saw his arm come around and slit her throat and watch as the blood gushed and her life followed right behind. The soulless version of himself wanted to find Eugene, Eugene had something he wanted, and killing his daughter had seemed like the easiest way to bring the crazy hunter front and center.

"What? You've killed so many innocent people in cold blood that you can't remember them all?" Eugene hit Sam. Hit him so hard that Sam saw stars. Sam's eyes felt as if they were rolling all around in their sockets.

"I was…"

"You were what? Possessed?"

"No." Sam managed. "I'm sorry." He croaked out, tears leaking what felt like the last bit of moisture out of his body.

"You're sorry!" Eugene hit him again. "That doesn't cut it boy. Sorry doesn't make it all better." He socked the tied up hunter in the stomach forcing all of the desperately needed air out of Sam's lungs.

Eugene pulled a knife out of its sheath from his waist band, and was toying with it when he heard something pounding on the door to the fallout shelter that he used for his unsavory duties as a hunter. Sam was still gagging when Dean and Bobby busted their way into the room. Dean didn't even blink, he just charged, knocked the hunter off of his feet, and Dean felt the knife slide into his stomach, but a little pain and blood wasn't' about to stop him from doing his job, his duty…protecting his little brother.

"My brother needs his meds. Didn't you hear me?" Dean asked as he punched the older hunter in the gut.

Dean reached and pulled the knife out of his own stomach with a medieval scream and brought it up to the man's neck; Dean's blood glistening on the knife and streamed down Eugene's neck in thick rivulets and pooled on the floor underneath the hunter's neck. Dean pressed the knife in and he felt the skin beneath the well sharpened blade break, and Euguen's blood joined Dean's in the stream down his neck and onto the floor. "Do it." Eugene spat. "Be a killer. Be like your brother."

"Dean." Sam said from across the room, arm slung around Bobby's shoulders trying desperately to keep himself up on wobbly legs. "Dean. Don't."

"Sammy, he took you, hurt you, and you want me to let him live?"

"Yes." Sam said firmly his voice sounding odd even to his own ears and then he lost control, the seizure over took him and Dean got off of the crazy hunter, the knife clattering to the ground beside Eugene, and he rushed to his brother, dug into his pocket, and with hands slicked with his own blood, fished out the medication that Dean now always kept on hand, and he helped Bobby keep Sam from hurting himself and as soon as the seizure was over, he opened the bottle, and Bobby took it from him and administered a dose to Sam.

"What's wrong with him?" Eugene asked a little frightened by the display.

"More than you will ever know." Dean said without looking over at the man on the floor.

Sam tried to sit up, tried to regain composure, and all he could do was move disjointed limbs and it took Bobby and Dean to get him back in an upright position. Bobby noted the blood leaking from Dean's gut and looked at Eugene. "You gonna let me take my boys and get them tended to? Or are you still hell bent on killing Sam? Because if you are, you can bet that Dean here won't let you leave the building."

Eugene looked at the boys and at Bobby and he shook his head. "I won't come after Sam."

"Damn straight you won't." Dean said. "You come after my brother again, you dare kidnap him again, and I won't just nic your neck with your big ass knife. I will slice you from your groin to your throat, and that's not a threat, that's a promise."

"D'n." Sam said trying to regain control over his muscles. "Dean." he said again with a little more clarity.

"No, Sammy, people don't get to do this stuff to you."

"I hurt him first." He managed. "Soulless me."

"I don't care if it was a skinwalker that looked like you. No one is hurting my brother." Dean's green eyes were fierce and Eugene realized that he should have listened to the other part of the gossip about the Winchester brothers—you hurt Sam, you better be prepared to kill Dean, because otherwise he would kill you without so much as a second glance.

"Dean, we need to get you to the hospital." Bobby pointed to the wound in Dean's belly. They managed to get Sam back on his feet and they were just about to the door when Sam stopped them and looked towards Eugene, tears in his eyes. "I'm sorry about your daughter. I'll find a way to make it up to you." Dean opened his mouth to say something and Sam shook his head. "No." Sam said stopping any further protest from his brother, and the three of them haltingly walked out of there, damaged but alive.


	2. Chapter 2

In the last eight years it seemed as if Sam had spent more time in a hospital waiting for news about his brother, about whether or not he would live, waiting to see if he would wake up, waiting for him to wake up, and waiting for the tight knot in his own stomach to dissipate.

Dean has spiraled down as they drove the hospital, he had bled quite a bit while they were in the fallout shelter, and he continued to bleed, and the adrenaline that Dean had used to fuel his need to find his brother had eased out and it had taken everything Sam had to keep his brother awake. Sam had just been reunited with his brother, mind, body, soul and hell experiences, and on a selfish level he needed his brother to help him through all of that, and on every other level that mattered, he just needed his brother by his side.

Sam knew that he had been a pain in the ass to the hospital staff as they tried to get him patched up from his latest round of pain. But the broken arm, torn ligaments, bruises, stiff muscles, and lost cap that he'd had put in when he'd been at Stanford, didn't stop him from asking the staff near to distraction for updates to his brother's condition, until finally one poor nurse looked him in the eye and said, "Sammy, I just had this conversation with your brother…"

"He's awake?"

"He's being taken for surgery and wouldn't let us put him under until we told him how you were."

"He's okay?"

"He's lost a lot of blood." She said touching his hair, pushing long hair from his face. "They are worried that he might have nicked his liver, he's in surgery." That was the last he had heard. They casted his arm, for the second time in ten years, and they sent him to the waiting room, where Bobby was already pacing a fairly nice hole in the carpet.

"You look like hell boy." Sam gave him sad and tired eyes and took a seat close to where Bobby was pacing.

"Why does he always do this?" Sam asked after a period of silence.

"Pardon?"

"Why does he always rush into things halfcocked and end up getting himself hurt? Why?"

"Oh come on boy, you know the answer." Bobby said as he finally took a seat next to the younger man. He needed to be strong for the younger hunter, Sam needed him, and when one of the boys needed him he felt as if he were the strongest man alive, he could do anything if the boys needed him. Bobby sometimes wondered if that was what it felt like to be a parent.

"To save me? To protect me? To what Bobby? I mean, it isn't like I've done him any favors. I just make everything worse. Every single time, and he gets hurt every single time. It has to stop. He needs to worry about himself."

Bobby chuckled and took a sip from the hot cup of horrible coffee that he had been holding for an hour, his face puckered at the cold cup of slop the coffee had turned into, put the cup down and turned to face Sam's inquiring eyes.

"He saw Eugene kidnap you." Sam's face turned into concern. "Saw your legs buckle from underneath you."

"Chloroform." Sam supplied.

"Dean ran as fast as he could towards you and the asshat, but he wasn't able to do anything before you were in the van and that van was peeling out of the parking lot. And all he kept yelling was 'he needs his meds, he needs his meds!'" Bobby ran a hand down his face. "He was in the Impala so fast that I barely realized he was taking off without me. Had to steal me a car to follow that fast as hell machine." Sam grinned a little.

"I think he's done something to it to make it fast because god knows it shouldn't move that fast."

Bobby nodded. "Well, we ended up back at my place because he lost the van, the boy beat himself up for it, kept abusing himself like that was going to make everything better."

"Dean always thinks everything is his fault. It's not. I trusted the guy, he said he needed help getting his groceries to the van, and I fell for it. I didn't know he was a hunter."

"I know boy."

"It's the same thing that made Dean make that deal in the first place." Sam's shoulders involuntarily tightened up. "If I'd just been able to see Jake for who he truly was…"

"Sam…"

"And then we can't forget how I trusted Ruby, and wow wee, look how that ended. If I wasn't so trusting…"

Bobby in a rare moment of physical contact put a hand on Sam's shoulder to stop his self-loathing rant. "But the fact that you are trusting, and that you always look for the good in everyone makes you who you are. And we wouldn't have you any other way." Bobby chuckled. "We've experienced what you are like without that trusting loveable nature, and trust me, I'd rather you be kidnapped for being trusting and helpful, than killing the guy outright because he looked at you cross eyed." Sam turned from Bobby; he couldn't look anyone in the eye when they recounted what he had been like without a soul. Dean had tried to tell him time and time again that it wasn't him, but it had been him, he had met soulless him when he was putting the pieces together, to reassemble his psyche, and he was a son of a bitch. But that son of a bitch was as much a part of him as his nose, eyes or fingers.

"Sam?" the nurse that had touched his hair and talked to him about Dean appeared in front of him.

"How's Dean?" Sam asked immediately.

"He came through surgery okay. He's going to be in some pain for a while, but he'll be okay. He's a lucky man."

"When can we see him?"

"In a little while, we want to get him settled into his room. I'll come out and get you as soon as you can see him. I promise."

Sam blinked the worried tears out of his eyes and nodded. "Thank you."

"You're welcome."

"He'll be okay Sam. He'll mend." Bobby reassured when he noted the fear in Sam's eyes. Sam nodded. _Dean WILL be fine_. Sam tried to reassure himself, and just like always, it didn't work.


End file.
